DC Guiding: Goodhowareyou?
Where we go again
The spring guiding season has begun — buses and students arriving from afar. I had more social interaction in four days than I’ve had in the last four months. On Friday I came home, wrapped a heating pad around my neck and slept for four hours — sitting up.
The city is still clothed in winter garb with leafless trees and waterless fountains but the sun shone often and the wind behaved mostly.
The lead teacher of my group of 50 tenth-graders asked me if there was a personality test to become a guide. In return I asked her if she thought I would be a guide if there were such a test. She tilted her head slightly, raised her eyebrows and gave me that “I see your point” look.
While at the Capitol I received my first “goodhowareyou?” of the season.
Goodhowareyou is the mashup of four words spoken in reply to your inquiry of “how are you.”
It’s used nearly exclusively by the younger set and anyone else needing to convey the sentiment that they are replying to you purely out of a (very) forced notion of politeness when in fact, if you died in front of them they would simply step over your lifeless corpse or post a shot of you on Instagram.
It’s Brilliant in a “sorry not sorry” kind of way.
(I don’t hate “brilliant” — Brits use it often, meaning exceptionally clever or talented — but never about me.)
When we go to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Potomac Park I stop at a quote of FDR’s etched in the rough hewn granite,
“We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all our citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.”
I have a student read it aloud and then ask the group if there was ever a time in FDR’s presidency when he failed to follow his own advice?
I have to tease the answer from them but yesterday an amazing thing happened.
Before I could even have someone read the quote a student sauntered up and said, “Well, that’s pretty ironic given the way Roosevelt treated Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor.”
He not only saw the point of the exercise but recognized and voiced the irony — that’s brilliant.
And that is why guiding is so cool and fun, even when my neck hurts while a chill wind blows.
See you out there.
Cheers.
